A Reason to Change
by Manjushage-chan
Summary: Rose's two great loves were nature and her family. Unfortunately for her, she was hundreds of miles away from one and a lifetime away from the other. SI-OC
1. Chapter 1

All in all, I was pretty happy with the way I died.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that I wanted to die, though. My tendencies toward solitude sometimes gave others the impression that I was disinterested in life. They couldn't be more wrong. I loved life. I loved life so much I couldn't stop wondering about every facet of it. I could spend hours happily in my own head, contemplating. With my beliefs being what they were, I believed that an end to life would mean an end to the thoughts I enjoyed so much. An end of me in all that I am.

I'm not so convinced anymore. Of course, that didn't come until After.

Back to Before, the thought of an endless black void scared me. A lot. However, there was one thought I had that scared me more.

I could picture it vividly. Myself, hair an aged white, losing the ability to move, then to speak. Surrounded by tittering, sympathetic nurses, but not by family. In this picture my then family had already passed ahead of myself. A smattering of imaginary nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephews popping in occasionally but with their own lives, scattered to the winds with hereditary wanderlust. My twin had always been so curious about the world. Keen to travel. It wasn't hard to picture her children being the same way. She was also difficult to picture dead. It made it that much worse, the image of me lying on bleached white sheets.

I could see myself dying in a cold, sterile place, surrounded by strangers in a too white room completely devoid of the natural green that I loved. Artificial. I could never think of that picture for too long, for fear that it would stick.

Compared to that, being hit by a car wasn't so bad. Preferable, even. No time to dread, just an instance of pain, then nothing. Similar to a bee sting. Except the bee was the size of a hippo. I won't deny that it hurt. But it hurt less than the thought of the white room.

Once the pain passed, I knew I was dead.

Once the shock passed, I wasn't so sure.

After all, I could still _think_. I had thought once I died, that it would be the end of every part of me. If I was dead, then I was brain dead as well, I shouldn't have been able to think. I had briefly considered the possibility that I was in a coma. The collision certainly _felt_ lethal, but the human body is capable of some pretty amazing feats, especially when it comes to survival. Nonetheless, I quickly discarded the idea that I was in a coma. I just felt too lucid, too awake for what I had read about comas. Of course, I couldn't be certain I was awake when I couldn't see, hear, or smell. Nor was I able to feel well enough to know if I was able to move. I simply was. Existing in a void, my childhood nightmare.

There was a time, it could have been days or decades, when I was certain that I had survived the collision with brain damage. Unable to sense anything around me and effectively trapped in my own body. I spent days or decades attempting to shout at someone, _anyone_ , to pull the plug, _let me go before I lose my mind_ , please. Please. _Please_. Without any aching in my throat to stop me, nor any hearing to know if I was even speaking, I'd beg until I was exhausted and drifted off to sleep or thought. Sleeping was worse, because with sleeping came waking up back into the void and heartbreaking disappointment. Thinking was better.

I wondered a thousand whys. Why do spiders have eight legs? Why is life carbon-based? Why do organisms reproduce rather than live forever? I'd let my thoughts drift into what ifs that at one time I'd contemplate while trailing my fingers with my trailing thoughts over and through the fibrous blades of grass behind my parents' brick suburban home. Sometimes I could swear I felt the phantom sensations of the sun on my back and wind in my hair.

It was a lonely existence and for all I was used to having only myself for company, it wasn't until that damn _white_ SUVlicenseplateGDF1673 that I truly what it meant to be alone.

* * *

Ages passed, and as my mood darkened so did my thoughts. I mourned. I mourned for the cute little nieces and nephews and godchildren that I never got to spoil. I mourned for the Maid of Honor spot I was promised by my sister as a giggling ten-year-old. I mourned how I'd never convert my two best friends to dog people. I mourned every piece of information I'd never learn and the dream house I'd never get to build. This mourning was easy. I'd been mourning might-have-beens my entire life. Self-pity was a specialty of mine.

The harder mourning was for my sister, who'd seen her twin splattered like a bug on a windshield. My poor sister, so like me on the surface, but different in all the ways that mattered. _Better_ in all the ways that mattered. Kind where I was apathetic, friendly where I was cold.

A doer where I was a thinker.

In the end, being a thinker worked in my favor. In an ironic twist of events, I was finally able to think fast enough to _do_.

I shoved her back to the sidewalk before she even knew what was going on. I hoped our health insurance covered a good therapist.

It was thinking about the accident that I made an important discovery. My fists were clenched, thinking about _the bitch that almost hit my sister_ , feeling my fingertips press into palms, when I realized: _I could feel my fingertips pressing into my palms!_

It was in a flurry of excitement that I took stock of my body, naked and mysteriously lacking in the chest department, but very much there. Everything but my face and hands were curiously numb and my skin felt _different_ , but I couldn't bring myself to care over the sheer joy. I moved to get up with newfound confidence-

-and was met with a rounded, slick surface. I felt my mouth curve up in a smile -where are my teeth?- and set in to think about this _interesting_ new information.

* * *

Time passed, I never did think of a good way to track it. Sensation eventually spread to the rest of my body and I began to hear low noises. The most constant of the noises sounded suspiciously like a heartbeat. Or maybe it wasn't so suspicious. After all, it fit in with my latest theory. It was fairly sound. The dark. The slimy encasement. It was so obvious.

The one thing I couldn't figure out was how I got here.

Out of all the snakes native to Ohio, I couldn't think of a single one large enough to consume a human.

I was just grateful that my brain-damage was extensive enough that I wasn't registering the pain of being digested alive.

* * *

I wondered how much longer my neurons would fire. I knew time was stretching in death. What had felt like years was probably only a few seconds, by my best estimations. I had to be getting close. Hallucinations of sound and light were increasing in intensity and frequency and sometimes I thought I could taste and smell through the stomach acid surrounding me.

I thought I was finally at the end of the line when I felt an intense pressure surround me. Movement? Was this a trick of the mind, like feeling like you're falling when you're only falling asleep? Could this be where the term "passing on" as a euphemism for death comes from?

I was shocked out of my train of thought by a sudden shock of cold, release of pressure, and a blinding light. I screamed in agony as my eyes burned. This was _not_ what death was supposed to be. It wasn't until later that I understood what had happened. It was a good thing my twin wasn't here to see this, she would never let me live down my snake theory.

I was born in a cold, sterile place, surrounded by strangers in a too white room completely devoid of the natural green that I loved.


	2. Chapter 2

For someone as religious as the grass is purple, rebirth was a trip and a half. At least a full week into my new life, during which all I could do was think and sleep, I still wasn't fully convinced that I wasn't in a coma. Though I had already ruled out the possibility of a coma months (was it months?) ago, it just made so much more _sense_.

Granted, I still thought my snake theory made more sense that being in utero. Who in their right mind would assume that they were a fetus?

At this point, I couldn't bring myself to care anymore. If I've truly been cognizant for nearly ten months, then I've spent that long wondering about my situation. Am I alive? Am I dead? Am I in a coma? Am I in a snake? I was exhausted of the topic. I was exhausted of _all_ topics. I was ready for something new. And if that something new happened to be my brand new existence, then bring on babyhood.

Though I could do with actually being able to see. I wish I could say that all I could see was a blur of colors, but even that would be too much to ask. At the moment, all I could see was a blur of _grays_. I chose to remain optimistic and expected my eyesight to improve over time. I truly had no idea whether it would, though. Infant development was never a topic that interested me, I had never had even a passing desire for children.

Joke's on me.

* * *

As weeks passed, I was eventually able to get a firmer hold on time. At two months old, my new life was a mortifying montage of feedings and diaper changes. My only entertainment was to shamelessly eavesdrop on my new parents' conversations. From what I could understand, Papa worked in a factory making electrical components and Mama usually worked in a different factory making clothes, when she wasn't on maternity leave. Also, the currency of wherever I lived was something called a 'credit' and if Papa's lamenting was to be believed, it seemed a credit would get you less and less every time you went to spend one.

I heard other things, but never coherently. Every time my parents were in the room together, primed for information revealing conversation, they'd take one look at me and devolve into baby talk. One would think that a pair of adults would eventually get bored of babbling nonsense at an unresponsive blob of tiny human, but no dice. Papa especially would lose all sense of dignity at first opportunity to make a variety of heinously twisted faces that, were I mentally a baby, would have terrified me. Terrified to tears that would have, in turn, terrified him.

He might have cried himself. He was a pretty ridiculous guy, my papa. I was sure he took it as a challenge if there was a person within eyesight without a smile, He looked like a clown as much as he acted one, with his curly red hair shooting out in every direction. That red was such a relief to finally see after weeks of seeing in gray-scale.

I had always liked red hair. If I had met Papa Before, we would have been good friends. Papa was a pretty young father. We would have been close in age as well. . .

* * *

At five months old, my eyesight was finally good enough to be constantly aware of my surroundings. Unfortunately, most of those surroundings were still in gray-scale, but at that point it was clear the gray was a design choice, not due to my infant eyesight. I spent my days memorizing my new family's small apartment, which more closely resembled my college dorm than an apartment. I had first assumed that the room I was used to seeing was one of a few that made up our apartment, with a kitchen and bathroom somewhere on the other side.

I was half-right.

The first time I could remember going through the door, I was in Mama's arms. It had never occurred to me to think it strange that I had only ever been in one room of our apartment. From that moment on, I would know that I had only ever been in one room of our apartment because the one room was all we had.

Mama stepped into the crowded hallway and joined the rush of people with practiced ease. I was no longer surprised by the fluidity of her walk or how men and women flowed around her like river water around a stone. The moment Mama stepped out of our home she became a queen, untouchable in her regality. She carried me how a warrior carried a sword: her burdened hands made her dangerous rather than defenseless. A single-eyed glance froze two roughhousing teens mid-shove and I wasn't sure if it was her beauty or her aura of power that made the look so effective.

From the boys' bowed heads and flushed cheeks, it may have been a combination of both.

So fierce.

The dichotomy of smiling baby talk Mama and regal Ice Queen Mama was _amazing_.

Mama, I want to be _just like you_ when I grow up. Seriously.

I held my head as high as a seven-month-old is capable of as we breezed by our section's communal bathrooms.

* * *

Eating in the cafeteria was always a memorable experience, mostly because it was so different from any cafeteria I ate in Before. Those cafeterias were loud and full of adolescents. This cafeteria had a fairly even distribution of ages and was almost discomforting in how orderly it was. Visitors stood quietly in pin straight lines with their beat up trays, thumbs ready to press to the fingerprint scanners, so that they could receive their bland looking, nutritionally tailored meal. Mama grabbed one of the odd double-wide trays and joined them.

The line moved quickly and soon she was helping me press my own wobbly baby thumb to the scanner. Heads turned as Mama glided purposefully back across the cafeteria. I wondered why they still looked. Never has Mama walked without purpose or without gliding. They should be used to it by now. We have seen many of the same people since we started coming everyday, two months ago. Perhaps the difference was that, unlike every other day, Mama was _smiling_.

This wasn't too out of the ordinary if location wasn't taken into account. Mama smiled for me and Papa all the time. In the privacy of our room, it would be more out of the ordinary if she _wasn't_ smiling. However, this was not our room. This was out in public and I had never seen Mama look anything other than coldly ethereal. Smiling was out of the question for regal Ice Queen Mama.

But she was smiling. As we continued, I caught sight of the reason for the smile. She was thin. Many aboard the ship were thin, but this woman looked like she was denied even the meager meals everyone else got by on, even as she absently stirred her watery potato soup. She could have been beautiful once, but with her too-sharp cheekbones and lank dark hair, all this woman looked was tired. But still, Mama. . .

"Rory." Mama's smile was now as gentle as her voice. The woman, Rory, looked up, somehow having ignored Mama's magnetic presence until that point, and gave a smile that was as tired as her eyes.

"Vi." How had I gone seven months without knowing Mama's name? Papa was a big fan of pet names, but it still should have come up at some point. Was Vi short for something? Viola? Violet? I bet it was Violet, Mama looked like a Violet. Besides, I was a Rose now, and Papa seemed like the type to name his daughter after his wife in such a roundabout way. Softie Papa.

"-know how it is, we change our whole lives around for our kids."

"I know what you mean, I refused to take Rosie out of our quarters for months, I was so worried she'd get sick. Why, Liam must have thought-" I laughed. A mistake, as now both Mama and Rory were cooing over me, but I couldn't help it. It wasn't the first time I had heard Papa's name, but I couldn't help the bubble of amusement that rose whenever I heard my goofy father's unfittingly refined name.

Liam just sounded so _lordly_. Papa was more of a court jester than anything, really. My train of thought was broken as a bottle full of the worst nutritional supplement known to man entered my field of vision. I accepted the bottle even as I eyed Mama's own solid nutritional supplement pack jealously. I still wasn't sure of the reason for the ship's lack of actual food. Almost every meal was a nutrition pack served with potatoes and soybeans. Why couldn't we just pick up more food whenever we went to harbor? Furthermore, why was there a factory on a boat? It just didn't make sense. But, I could deal with that later. For the moment, I was just glad that my horrible seasickness from before didn't carry over.

* * *

As it turns out, the Ark is not a boat. It was an assumption I made based on Mama and Papa referring to places on the ship as 'dock'. As Mama pointed out constellations to me from the window, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the sight of the moon rising over the surface of the Earth. A strangled sound escaped my mouth without permission.

Mama rushed to head off the tears.

She failed.


End file.
